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| "Dream Big" by Marianne Glick |
In this issue
2011 Meeting programs
New product review: Watercolor ground
Inspiration: Marianne Glick
Presidential Column
by Kriste Lindberg
The birds are chirping outside, flowers are starting to show. Spring is on its way! (The ground hog must have been right this year.)
The birds are chirping outside, flowers are starting to show. Spring is on its way! (The ground hog must have been right this year.)
Soon, it'll be time to get out and paint your parks, join plein air events, and more. This year’s meeting programs support these endeavors while providing general knowledge and all-around good fun!
Speaking of getting out more, we invite you to peruse our newly designed Web site. Just click your way to www.bloomingtonwatercolor.org
I'm sure you will agree that it is quite inviting and a real pleasure to browse, complete with a section on activities such as 2011 meetings and their associated programs (a BWS specialty!), paint-out events, workshops, examples of members’ paintings, and more including a link to our newsletter, Brushstrokes. And, of course, the Web site has a page where one can simply and easily join or renew.
A great big round of thanks to our Treasurer and computer guru Carol Rhodes for this major undertaking.
Please let us know if you have any questions and we'd love to hear comments!
Enjoy.
March 14 meeting offers Troubleshooting Session
Having trouble with a particular painting or area of a painting? Bring your problem painting and get some friendly advice and possible solutions. Following a brief business meeting, Vi Working, Dan Alexander, Jeanne Iler, Jacki Frey, Carol Rhodes and Linda Meyer-Wright will be on hand to help BWS members solve their watercolor problems.
The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the First Christian Church at the corner of Kirkwood Avenue and Washington Street.
Programs slated for 2011 meetings
Program chair Kathy Karnes and Joyce Stumpf have announced programs for the rest of the calendar year. Here’s a quick rundown on what to look forward to.
April 11– Plein Air and Beyond: Choosing a subject, focus and composition. Jacki Frey and Nancy Metz will provide not only a quick packing list but also some tips and strategies for producing some happy results. Jacki will bring in a photo to work from and show us how to isolate and draw an area of interest out of a scene. Bring sketch pad, pencil and eraser.
May 9 – An Introduction to Portrait Painting. Everyone is invited to participate in this portrait painting activity led by Tricia Wente. The goal will be teaching basic considerations that go through a painter's mind during the process of creating a portrait.
June 13 – Sticks and Stones. Jeanne Vieter will demonstrate some of her techniques for painting sticks and stones.
July and August: No meetings
Sept. 12 – Welcome Back. Bring your old toothbrush (one you won't want to use again, of course) along with your paint supplies and a cover-up for your clothes – this will be messy and fun! Jeanne Dutton will teach how to blend colors as you splatter over a paper masque. Table coverings provided.
Oct. 10 – Travel Journaling. The plan is to provide a brief overview of documenting travels using watercolor. Jo Weddle and company will share their recent travel experiences in Spain!
Nov. 14 – Artist Trading Cards. Learn about Art Trading Cards and some rather handy computer applications for watercolor artists. After a brief presentation by Jerry Harste, we'll spend the bulk of our time making art trading cards to be traded with one another at the December Holiday Party. Bring your own paints; blank trading cards will be available.
New product review
Watercolor Ground
This winter Daniel Smith announced a new Watercolor Ground that makes any surface – canvas, paper, plaster, hardboard, glass, plastic and metal – suitable for watercolor. The e-mails were flying through cyberspace as artists spread the word and inquired whether the product lived up to its claims.
BWS member Carol Rhodes ordered her jar of Watercolor Ground and immediately tested it. Here’s her review.
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Unhappy with the middle flower, Carole abandoned this painting. She covered the middle flower with the watercolor ground and repainted the standards (upright parts of the iris). |
It smells and spreads a lot like latex. (It's an acrylic base, so that makes sense.) It dries very quickly. I suggest spooning some out into a small sealable container like a baby food jar, and then working from that. Since the product is water based, if you are overpainting a section, it will pick up some of the watercolor underneath so you may have to apply a couple of layers. It’s as white as my Arches and Twinrocker papers. On paper it’s difficult not to leave brush marks and is a bit hard to blend. To mimic the texture of paper, though, you can pat it with your finger as it dries. Don’t use your favorite brushes; like working with latex paint, you have to rinse and rinse—and rinse! And then soak.
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| Dan Alexander painting with chocolate. |
Dan Alexander was pictured in the March 3 Bloomington Herald-Times, using chocolate as his medium to paint a portrait of jazz great Miles Davis. Dan produced the work of art at the 7th annual Art of Chocolate event to support Options, a non-profit organization that partners with people with disabilities in south central Indiana.
Jeanne Iler is offering FREE metal and wood frames plus glass pieces. Contact her at 812-876-8610 or e-mail jeanne2@bluemarble.net.
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| "Chief Little Elk of the Lakota Sioux" by Jerome Harste |
Jerry Harste’s "Chief Little Elk of the Lakota Sioux" watercolor was accepted by the Missouri Watercolor Society for the Watercolor Missouri National 2011 to be held at the National Winston Churchill Museum & Library in Fulton, M.. The Opening Reception and Award Presentation will beon Sunday, April 10, at 1:30 p.m. in the National Museum's Anson Cutts Gallery. Watercolors juried into this show will be available May 25 for viewing online by going to www.mowsart.com and clicking on Galleries and "2011 Online Exhibition."
Owen County’s Delta Theta Tau Sorority has moved its annual raffle drawing for a Ken Bucklew painting to May 3. Zoe Dean plans to bring the painting to the March BWS meeting so members can see what it actually looks like. Tickets are one for $5 and three for $10. You can contact Zoe at sdean@bluemarble.net to buy your chances.
Inspiration
Ideas come from connecting to a painting
The idea for “Dream Big” evolved from the painting process itself, said its creator Marianne Glick.
“I usually paint abstracts and so somewhere in the process of painting, I begin to see and feel something I want to bring out of the work,” she said.
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Marianne Glick's "Dream Big" |
“Dream Big,” a 36-by-36 acrylic, depicts “the energy of a big idea bursting out of a dream – the clouds – and becoming reality,” Glick explained. “There is also the feeling of a star, meteor or ship – all metaphors for me of a vessel with a clear path to the future.”
Glick painted the work while in Florida and says that influenced her to use colors of the ocean and sun. But location wasn’t the only inspiration for the work.
“I was already getting lots of ideas bouncing around in my head about what I might be able to bring to the United Way campaign in 2011,” said Glick, who had just been named chair of the Central Indiana United Way campaign.
Glick describes her painting process as starting with a feeling, enhancing that feeling with music and then painting the emotion. She recalled Sandy Ezell, her first teacher, telling her “something would come to her” as she painted.
“At the time I didn't know what she was talking about,” Glick said. “I would stare at my paintings and nothing would come to me. Now, more often than not, as I'm working with the painting I feel a connection between me and the work and see something in the painting that I want to bring out.”
Although Glick does watercolors, she finds it difficult to make corrections in that medium. She prefers the freedom that acrylic paint gives her. “I can blend colors almost as well as I could do in oil and if I don’t like something, I can cover it up and redo one part of a piece or just cover it up and start over,” she said.
“Dream Big” is on the cover of the March/April issue of Branches magazine. The Indianapolis Art Center will exhibit Glick’s work March 28 through May 28. Her work is also available at the Kuaba Gallery on Massachusetts Avenue in Indianapolis and the Ann King Gallery in Zionsville.
Do you have a painting you'd like to talk about? E-mail nmetz@indiana.edu to volunteer to be featured in a future Inspirations column.
Register now for Ivy Tech Center for Lifelong Learning’s next session
Jeanne Dutton, Jeanne Iler, Linda Meyer-Wright and Nancy Davis Metz will be teaching a variety of classes during Ivy Tech’s next session, which begins March 21. To see the complete schedule and to register go to http://www.ivytech.edu/bloomington/cll/personalenrichment/.
Outside BWS
March 28 – April 25
Cardinal Fellow Exhibit
Hilbert Circle Theatre, Indianapolis
April 1
E-mail deadline for Art on the Green application
French Lick Town Green, Oct. 8 & 9
Request application by e-mailing frenchlickart@yahoo.com
April 9
Submission deadline for Illinois 27th Annual open Juried Exhibition 2011
Download prospectus at www.illinoiswatercolorsiciety.org
April 9
Postmark/E-mail deadline for Swope Art Museum’s 67th Annual Wabash Valley Juried Exhibition
June 1-3
A Plein Air Approach to Painting Flowers
Workshop with Ratindra Das
Chicago Botanic Garden
$80 per day
